Success continued to evade the Lady Devils volleyball team (0-20) on Monday night as they lost their 28th straight match going back to last season, falling to Ottawa JV 3-0 (25-11, 25-21, 25-12). A lot of the damage was self-inflicted. Allen had 18 errors in the the match to just 16 kills, hitting for a negative percentage in the first and third sets and hitting below 10 percent in the second set. "We defeated ourselves," head coach Whitney Shaw said. "Ottawa didn't do anything. They just kept the ball in play and waited for us to make a mistake. And if we didn't make a mistake then we were giving them easy balls and letting them score. Most of the time though it was just us making the error, a lot of errors." Sophomore McKenzie Kueker led the team in kills with five with Bhana Gonya right behind with four. Both players also recorded a team-high four errors. Serving also struggled as four different players recorded just one ace opposed to five serving errors. 

Freshman Emily Fitz led the team in blocks with two but also had three blocking errors. In total, Allen committed 47 errors. "It's extremely frustrating," Shaw said. "We've had better practices lately. We think we find solutions to problems and then it doesn't necessarily fix it in a game. Mentally it's getting hard, it's draining for the players as well to not see the result that we want. We're going to continue to try and fix it, there's nothing else we can do." The Lady Devils hung with Ottawa to start the first set, going almost point-for-point for the first 8 points before the Lady Braves carved out a lead that they rode to a set victory. 

The second set was by far the best. Ottawa crept out to a 21-16 lead and the Lady Devils battled back to get within two before the Lady Braves grabbed the final two points to get the win. Finally, the Lady Braves jumped out to an early 9-point lead in set three. Allen held tough and didn't allow another big run but it wasn't enough to get back in it and they fell 25-12 to close out the match. 

"We still have the same standards that we started with," Shaw said. "We can't just lower our standards because we don't have a win. It doesn't matter to us that we're down some players, we're not trying to play the pity card. We're still trying to hammer it down. We have good players out there, we're just not showing up come match time."

by TIMOTHY EVERSON The Iola Register